NEW YORK – Last year Epson turned the printing and imaging market on its ear with the release of EcoTank. So what does this company do for an encore? Epson released five all-in-one colour printers under its EcoTank brand with even bigger ink reservoirs.

In 2015, Epson embarked on trying to solve one of the major problems with printing today, which is running out of ink and an end user’s lack of desire to replenish said ink. The new EcoTank SuperTank units hold the equivalent to about 20 sets of ink cartridges or more, depending on the model. The company is basically guaranteeing the printers will not run out of ink for two years.

The new line up of EcoTank products consists of the EcoTank Expression ET 2500, 2550 and 3600. In the EcoTank Workforce arena there are the ET 4500, 4550 and 16500. EcoTank does not use toner cartridge; instead implement bottles. These bottles last approximately two years. Replacement bottles have a starting cost of $12.99 per bottle.

In this new round releases Epson is focusing the EcoTank line towards more vertical markets such as graphic arts. The company has introduced a wide-format machine the ET 3600 specifically for graphic designers in the SMB space.

Brian Baltezore, product manager for Epson, said the new EcoTank enables creative professionals to do more printouts in draft mode.

“These new EcoTanks are a step up from the entry-level products released last year and what we found is that because ink was no longer an issue more printing was being done in colour.” The ink anxiety has ended,” he said.

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Baltezore added that 30 per cent of EcoTank purchases were customers who made the decision they did not want to buy another printer anymore.

The new EcoTank ET 3600 has enough ink to print 10,500 pages in black-and-white. And, 11,000 colour pages. Compared to the entry-level EcoTank ET 2500 the wide-format machine has the equivalent of about 50 ink cartridge in its SuperTank.

One of the issues with creative professionals was the wide-format printing meant replacing cartridges often. The other option for this group was to contract the printing out to print shops, which prevented them from seeing their work instantly.

Priced at $1,199 the wide-format EcoTank is not just for graphic arts professionals. Baltezore told CDN that interior designers, real estate professionals and financial services companies can also use this type of printer.

Baltezore said that the EcoTank ET3600 is compatible for Managed Print Services partners.

The EcoTank line features built-in wireless enabling users to print from tablets and smartphones across a range of operating systems, as well as through Epson Connect solutions.